The present invention is directed to a dental apparatus which has one or more hand held preparation instruments or dental handpieces of different configurations that are held in deposit devices having allocated sensors that acquire the configuration and/or the deposit condition of each of the preparation instruments, instrument-related switches and display elements and a control means shared in common by the preparation instruments with whose assistance instrument-related functions can be displayed at a display and can be potentially activated with the assistance of a foot switch dependent on a removal or, respectively, deposit of an instrument.
An apparatus, which has a plurality of preparation instruments of different configurations that are held in deposit devices which include sensors for determining the position of and configuration of the particular preparation instrument, instrument-related switches and display elements and a control means shared in common by preparation instruments with whose assistance instrument-related functions can be displayed at the display and can be potentially activated with the assistance of a foot switch dependent on the removal and/or deposit of the instrument, is known and, for example, is disclosed in EP-B1-0 391 367. The known apparatus contains a plurality of holders for dynamic instruments, for example instruments provided with drive devices whose control and operating function can be displayed on a monitoring and control panel. A microprocessor is provided for this purpose. This microprocessor is designed so that a plurality of function display fields can be generated on the panel for the visual display of, on the one hand, instrument-related control functions and, on the other hand, auxiliary functions. An alpha-numerical keyboard can also be connected to the microprocessor, which makes it possible to display input information on the display fields. The monitoring and control panel can be a picture screen that can be utilized for displaying text and video information.